Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Haitian Drummer, Obit

Frisner Augustin, a Haitian vodou master drummer whose deep knowledge of traditional rhythms and leadership of the Brooklyn-based Troupe Makandal made him a major force in preserving and popularizing his Afro-Haitian heritage, died on Feb. 28 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He was 63. NY Times Obit.

Marginal Notes: Great performances, poor players

Arthur Fiedler, Conductor, Boston Pops

Years ago I recall watching a television documentary on Arthur Fiedler, the conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra. The camera caught Fiedler backstage, stooped and shuffling slowly about as he struggled with his tux in preparation for the evening performance at Symphony Hall. He looked like the old man he had become—tired, fatigued, worn out. But then, as he stepped out onto the stage, a miracle happened. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for 32 years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Death Music: Our Sweetest Songs

Waking or asleep,     
Thou of death must deem     
Things more true and deep     
Than we mortals dream,     
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?     
 
We look before and after,     
And pine for what is not:     
Our sincerest laughter     
With some pain is fraught;     
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

            Percy Bysshe Shelley.  To a Skylark.  Poets knew it.

On May 24, 2011,  we posted an article, The Hospice Flute, about Elaine Whitman who plays the ancient Indian flute for dying hospice patients.

This week, a similar article appeared in the NY Times. Relaxing, Touching the Memory, Music Helps With the Final Transition supplements Ms. Whitman's post. One wonders for how many millennia music has been a balm to the dying.  In Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams we see a flute fashioned from a bird's thigh bone that dates back 32,000 years.  The language of music has been with us far longer than any language now spoken on this blue dot.

On Music

The Hospice Flute

by Elaine Whitman

"The sign in the Salt Lake City Public Library read "Make Your Own Native American Flute: One-Week Class by Master Flute-Maker Bill Hughes." I was intrigued. I had been playing the NAF for six years, and loved the easy free-form improvisation of the instrument; so different from the classical silver flute I had studied so seriously when I was in my teens. I registered for the class"... Read on: Download NAF

You can contact Ms. Whitman at EW Email.

Listen to Ms. Whitman's NAF: Download DecemberSnow

Author Bio:  Elaine Whitman started to play the classical flute when she was nine years old and studied with virtuoso Julius Baker when she was in high school. When she got to Boston University, Elaine took a new direction in life that led to becoming a professional educator –– first as an elementary school teacher and then as a consultant to business and industry. This was followed by using her talents as as writer and speaker in the field of domestic violence awareness. She began playing the Native American Flute in 1998. In her so-called retirement years, she expresses herself creatively with music and photography. She brings her music into hospice and poetry recitals with her husband, Neal, who took up poetry in his retirement. Together they create haiga – her photographs combined with his haiku poems. Elaine and Neal met getting their Doctor of Education degrees at Columbia University's Teachers College and, on May 20, 2011, celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary.

Music is Medicine, Music is Sanity

This amazing TED performancy by R Gupta of the L.A. Symphony Orchestra compliments the post about Tim Lee and Jorge Camara's work.

Melodies of Healing and Caring

Recently, I was visiting Kauai, that magical Pacific island, and some friends took me to their favorite Indian restaurant in Kapaa town.  There, I chanced to meet my old friend, Tim Lee, an ophthalmologist and an accomplished pianist.  During our brief conversation, he told me about work he’s been doing with other physician-musicians in Hawaii, particularly, his partner on Kauai, Dr. Jean Shein, and Honolulu ophthalmic surgeon Dr. Jorge Camara. 

If you want to read more about music and medicine please:  Download The Music of Healing. Your comments will be appreciated.

  Drs. Jorge Camara, Jean Shein and Tim Lee

Nina's Musical Canon

As the project for a class on the Medical Humanities, Williams College sophomore, Nina Piazza created her Musical Canon. One usually thinks of a canon as a collection of literary works.  Nina has taken the concept to another level. 

Music has always been a driving force in my life, ever since I began to learn to play the piano at the age of six. I never really embraced classical music until I started to play it myself. Since then, it has inspired and changed me. Music, of all sorts, has been here for me throughout my whole life. I love books and reading, but they have never provided the emotional connection that music has.  Nina.

You may contact Nina at: NP Email.

 

 

Claude Debussy's La Fille Aux Cheveaux de Lin is the first piece on her Canon.

Here are the links to the rest::

2. Rilo Kiley: Science vs. Romance

3. Creston: Concertino for Marimba

4. Hancock: Chamelion

5. Stravinsky: L'Oiseau de Feu

6. Mitchell: The Circle Game

7. Holst: Jupiter the Bringer of Jollity

8. The Beatles: Blackbird

9. Chopin: Nocturne #1 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27

10. Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, The Grand Gate at Kiev

Here's Nina's complete canon in an easy to read format: Download My Musical Canon.

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Marginal Notes: Streets of Philadelphia

Back in my room on the 14^th floor of the hotel I stood at the window and looked down on the gleaming streets of the city.  I thought about the man I had seen slumped over a makeshift cardboard sign on which was scrawled one word:  “Hungry.”  A tangled mass of black hair emanated from the back of his stocking cap, his coat was marred with grease stains, his ankles showed white between the tattered cuffs of his trousers and the tops of his dirty sneakers.  When I dropped a few coins into the plastic bowl in his lap, he barely stirred. In thirty years the streets of Philadelphia haven’t changed much. >>more

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Sympathetic Resonance

Any vibrating object—a wooden reed, a string, a cymbal, a bell—produces sound waves.  These waves are capable of causing a second object in close proximity to sound as well, even though the second object is not set in motion directly by physical means.  This phenomenon is called sympathetic resonance.

Vibrating objects with musical tonality are not the only things that resonate.  Words are capable of doing the same thing, albeit in a different way....more

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog.  The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau:  "I love a broad margin to my life."